Research has shown that within a traditional organic chemistry curriculum, organic chemistry students struggle to develop deep conceptual understanding of reactions and attribute little meaning to the electron-pushing formalism. At the University of Ottawa, a new curriculum was developed for organic chemistry in which students are taught the language of the electron-pushing formalism prior to learning about specific reactions. Reactions are then organized by governing pattern of mechanism rather than by functional group and are taught in a gradient of complexity. To investigate how students are making connections across reactions within the new curriculum, a card sort task was developed. The card sort task consisted of 25 cards, each depicting the reactants and solvent for a reaction taught during the two-semester organic chemistry sequence. The first part of the task asked participants to sort 15 of 25 cards into categories. Then, participants were given the 10 remaining cards to incorporate into categories with the previous 15. Participants were asked to explain the characteristics of each category and their sorting process. Students (N = 16) in an organic chemistry course were interviewed while enrolled in the second semester course. We analyzed the students’ sorts based on which cards were sorted frequently together, the underlying characteristics used to form the categories, and the participants’ sorting processes. Participants created categories based on different levels of interpreting the reactions on the cards, with levels ranging from recognizing identical structural features to identifying similar types of mechanisms. Based on this study, if we want students to develop mechanistic thinking, we think students need to be more explicitly directed to the patterns present in organic reaction mechanisms and given opportunities to uncover and identify patterns on their own, during both summative and formative assessments.

中文翻译：

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反应模式：卡片排序任务，用于调查学生的有机化学反应组织

研究表明，在传统的有机化学课程中，有机化学专业的学生努力发展对反应的深刻概念性理解，而对推动电子的形式主义几乎没有任何意义。渥太华大学开发了一种新的有机化学课程，其中在学习特定反应之前，先向学生教授推电子形式主义的语言。然后，通过控制机制的模式而不是通过功能组来组织反应，并以复杂度的梯度进行教导。为了调查学生如何在新课程中跨反应建立联系，开发了卡片排序任务。卡片分类任务由25张卡片组成，每张卡片描述了在两个学期有机化学顺序中教授的反应的反应物和溶剂。任务的第一部分要求参与者将25张卡片中的15张分类。然后，给参与者剩余的10张卡片，将其与之前的15张卡片合并到类别中。要求参与者解释每个类别的特征及其排序过程。学生 （在第二学期课程中，对有机化学课程中的N = 16）进行了采访。我们根据频繁分类的卡片，构成类别的基本特征以及参与者的分类过程，分析了学生的分类。参与者根据解释卡片上反应的不同级别创建了类别，级别从识别相同的结构特征到识别相似的机制类型不等。基于这项研究，如果我们希望学生发展机械思维，我们认为学生需要在总结性和形成性评估中更明确地针对有机反应机制中存在的模式，并有机会自行发现和识别模式。